This geek's mission: to help your nonprofit achieve its mission

Social Media

On September 25th Veronica Peñaloza Wolfermann, Facebook Account Manager for nonprofits spoke to a group of nonprofit professionals from Texas Grants Resource Center

Social Media is a great way to get the word out about the work of your nonprofit organization. Facebookoffers so many options for nonprofits: from outreach to fundraising. On September 25th, 2018 Veronica Peñaloza Wolfermann, Facebook Account Manager for nonprofits spoke to a group of nonprofit professionals from Texas Grants Resource Centerabout how best to use Facebook for the good of the community.

Here is a selection of some of the info, tips and hacks that Veronica described:

If a nonprofit has a donate button on a Facebook live feed, there is 10 times more engagement than other “non video” donation posts.

Nonprofits can set up mentorships if their page has a group

When deciding what to post on your nonprofit’s page, always ask: “will this translate into donations, volunteers or other support?” If the subject is not aligned with the nonprofit’s mission, the post probably won’t help much (even if it gets a lot of likes).

Here is a link to some of the Facebook offerings that Veronica described. Here is a link to info about future Texas Grants Resource Center presentations.

There is a recently-introduced marketing channel called Messenger Marketing. This channel developed whenFacebookopened the opportunity (in 2016) for companies (such as ManyChat) to develop tools to interface with Facebook Messenger.

It was great to learn about a cutting-edge trend. And even if you don’t use the Messenger Marketing channel (yet) – there were lots of great marketing tips shared at #Conversations2018.

Here are my notes from Day One of #Conversations2018 (including the names of the experts credited with sharing these nuggets of super wisdom). Enjoy!

The average open rate for email is 20%; for messenger is 70-90%;

The average click through rate for email is 2.4%; for messenger is 20-30%;

A person checks smart phone 110x a day on average;

People naturally want a feeling of progress – so remove obstacles for them;

Listen to your audience: what are they asking; what progress do they want to make; where are they hanging out?

People like learning about themselves. Create some quizzes to help them (and learn about them at the same time);

Success requires measurement;

Create irresistible content and promote it;

Include an incentive to engage;

Create custom audiences of engagement;

Learn about and use Facebook custom audiences;

Craft your narrative first;

Questions can be boiled down to just 8: who, what, when, where, why, how, which and I (will I?/ should I? / can I?);

Instead of asking “Do you have any questions?” or “How can I help?” try asking a ‘binary’ question (i.e. yes or no answer or just two answer options).

If you are starting out – start with just one business objective to solve (don’t get too complicated).

Twitter is known for social engagement. Last week it was fun to take the talk of twitter off-line and into the classroom for some educational engagement in real life.

I was excited to share tips in a presentation called Twitter for Nonprofits at Austin Community College’s Center for Nonprofit Studies. Twitter is one social media tool that can be used to Inform, Engage and Move your audience in support of your nonprofit organization.

The panelists described ways to raise your game on social media (mainly, in this case, Instagram). The main questions of the evening revolved around ‘how do I connect with businesses and brands to create a side hustle, and even a main hustle?’